Culture: The Intangible Asset in a Company

To understand the organizational culture of a company, one needs to start by looking at the history. Lakeshore Learning Materials was born from a divorced mother of three named Ethelyn Kaplan, who took a dream and a chance by moving her family to California in 1954 to open a toy store. When she started noticing that teachers were interested in her material, Ethelyn realized that she needed to expand her business into educational materials. 60 years later, Lakeshore Learning Materials has grown into a company with over 2000 employees, 60 retail stores throughout the United States and growing. Lakeshore Learning Materials is currently headed by Ethelyn’s grandsons, Bo and Josh Kaplan. Under the supervision of Bo and Josh, Lakeshore continues to be a leader in the Educational Materials, yet still able to keep the family culture that their grandmother started. Highest quality customer service and hard work are the core values that shape Lakeshore’s Organizational Strategy. These high expectations aren’t hard for employees at Lakeshore because the company is so loved by everyone that works there, that they give nothing less than the best.

The world we live in today is made up of many countries, each unique in their own way, each continually growing as they try to adapt to a rapid changing environment and economy. The way in which each country adapts to these changes relies heavily on the culture, traditions, customs and overall way of life of the given society (Wharton). When it comes to the global economy, every country has its own definition of what being successful really means and the leadership that leads to success is defined differently as well. The way in which a leader needs to adjust their strategies are dependent upon the individual culture they are working with. Within each culture, there are certain elements that can impact the success of an organization. I will be discussing what these elements are and how they can help or hinder the success of an organization.

The organization culture as a leadership concept has been identified as one of the many components that leaders can use to grow a dynamic organization. Leadership in organizations starts the culture formation process by imposing their assumptions and expectations on their followers. Once culture is established and accepted, they become a strong leadership tool to communicate the leader 's beliefs and values to organizational members, and especially new comers. When leaders promote ethical culture, they become successful in maintaining organizational growth, the good services demanded by the society, the ability to address problems before they become disasters and consequently are competitive against rivals. The leader 's success will depend to a large extent, on his knowledge and understanding of the organizational culture. The leader who understands his organizational culture and takes it seriously is capable of predicting the outcome of his decisions in preventing any anticipated consequences. What then is organizational culture? The concept of organizational culture has been defined from many perspectives in the literature. There is no one single definition for organizational culture. The topic of organizational culture has been studied from many perspectives and disciplines, such as anthropology, sociology, organizational behavior, and organizational leadership to name a few. Deal defines organizational culture as values,

McCoy’s Building Supply Centers and Chick-fil-A are two 70 years old, successful companies withstanding the test of time. They continue to sustain growth and longevity through economic turbulence, and remain competitive with new and upcoming companies. What is the secret to their success one might wonder? As we examine each company, we begin to recognize the existence of a solid organizational culture. The organizational culture of a company is the anchoring core values, which permeates throughout the company and its employees (Schermerhorn, Osborn & Uhl-Bien, 2012, pp. 9).

Before a new business owner begins planning the logistics of their company, he/she must first identify what type of culture he/she will promote to its employees. This culture he/she creates will be central to the company’s identity. It will define the way in which its employees interact with each other, as well as how the company interacts with the outside world. A good, strong culture will attract new employees, partners, and customers, creating a business that is supported by the surrounding community. Whereas a bad, weak culture will cultivate a poor reputation in which the community does not support or care for the company’s success. If I were to create my own business I would attempt to create a culture in which the employees

Chapter 10: Do you think it is possible for an outsider to accurately discern about the underlying cultural values of an organization by analyzing symbols, ceremonies, dress, or other observable aspects of culture in comparison to an insider with several years of work experience? Select a percentage (e.g., 10%, 70%, etc.) and explain your reasoning.

Today, it is not uncommon to find a vast amount of companies that are hiring culturally diverse employees or are doing business abroad. With that being said, it is exceedingly important to understand culture and all the aspects that it makes up in order to be able to bring about a productive work environment. Culture is diverse and complex and brings about positive change, new ideas, and viewpoints. However, how does one effectively analyze all aspects of culture that allows them to bring together people of different backgrounds? In this essay I’m going to be discussing about the five levels at which culture can be analyzed as well as how culture is exhibited in the business environment to show how one can bring all cultures together in the workplace.

Culture epitomizes the consensus within a company about how activities should be accomplished and is conceived as a result of a group’s shared experience and learning with respect to matters of external adaptation and internal integration (Schein, 1985). A strong culture is fundamental to the success of an organisation and the relationship between corporate culture and identity is clearly one that would benefit from further academic and business research. In order to allow a systematic and objective evaluation of the concept of corporate culture, its various sub-components need to be analysed. Although there is no universally accepted definition of corporate culture, the literature review suggested that the following are important elements of culture; philosophy, mission, values, principles, guidelines, history, national culture, the founder of the company and subculture. (Ambler and Barrow, 1996; Czarniawska and Wolff, 1998; Schmidt,

The term corporate culture is a general term to refer to the company's culture in general. Culture itself is a great topic. To understand the corporate culture, there are three elements of culture that has been commonly known in public.

“The factors that are most important in the creation of an organization’s culture include founders’ values, preferences, and industry demands.” - (Carpenter, M., Taylor, B., Erdogan, B. (2009))

Coleman (2013) argues that within the numerous differences in various corporate cultures, there are six common traits: Vision, values, practices, people, narrative, and place. The starting point to a great corporate culture is the mission statement. It helps guide employees in their everyday decision making process, while informing customers, suppliers, etc. of the company’s vision. A company’s values serve as a guideline to achieve the company’s vision. Practices are what the company actually does that support their stated values. There would be no coherent culture

Culture is definitely one important thing. Culture is defined as the learned behavior patterns that are attained by members in a society. Throughout this entire class we have learned so much about culture and how important it is for being historical and cultures as interconnected. The idea of culture being historical is really important because all cultures are known to be apart of something bigger. In one of the readings, “culture is defined as historically produced in particular locations under the influence of local, national, and global forces and events” (Merry, pg. 11). In order for one to understand culture one must know the history behind it and the traditions passed on through time. Culture is about all of the ideas and practices that have been going on for years and year but it is still open to new and changing ideas. Furthermore, the idea of culture being interconnected is important because no particular part of a culture can be studied in alone. Culture is known to be an integrated whole making it all connected with one another. By being interconnected it consists of the beliefs, morals, skills, and much more that one can learn from others in the society. Overall, culture being interconnected is extremely important and significant because in order to understand the whole culture, one must study all of the connected aspects, it is the only way.

One way to imagine corporate or organizational culture in the contemporary world is to define it as a way that allows for certain assumptions: that the organization finds meaning and values in the inner structure of the entity, and that there is a pattern of shared and basic assumptions that the group uses to perform duties and solve issues. In this, the organizational culture is something taught to new employees, shared, and a way of "doing business" that is based upon generally accepted practices for that particularly organization (Schein, 1992, p. 12). Too, the 21st century has embraced globalization bringing the world closer in economics, politics, communication and particularly, business. The changing demands and expectations of global stakeholders cause an organization's culture to also evolve, particularly in the nature of embracing cultural and stylistic differences (Trebing and Estabrooks, 2005). Only in this way, notes a recent study, will companies be able to appropriately compete in the modern world (Mahrokian, et al., 2010).

Organizational culture is a set of shared norms and values that describes an organization (Ashworth P., 2015). Organizational culture is the only true and unique identifier (Ashworth P., 2015). It can be compared to finger prints, as it can be similar, but still unique compared to other organizations (Ashworth P., 2015). Products, innovations, strategies etc. can be replicated, but not an organization’s culture (Ashworth P., 2015). For customers, suppliers, employees, and all other stakeholders, it is culture that differentiates one organization from the other (Ashworth P., 2015).

Culture impacts most aspects of organizational life, such as how decisions are made, who makes them, how rewards are distributed, who is promoted, how people are treated, how the organization responds to its environment, and so on. (Mullins , 2010) The right culture aids the execution of strategy, (Becher , 2012) lifts productivity and innovation, (Boedker, et al., 2012) and in doing so provides organizations with a form of competitive advantage which is very difficult to replicate. In corporation culture, there are also key elements such as beliefs, values and norms. This essay talks about evaluating thoroughly about components within organization culture and the management of the culture in hospitality perspective.